Do the Pistons have a blowout problem?

Making the playoffs for the first time since 2009 was an enormous step forward for the Detroit Pistons, however is the amount of blowout losses they suffered this season a concerning sign?

You would be hard pressed to find anybody who considers the Pistons’ 2015-16 season anything but a huge success.

They finally clawed their way back into the playoffs, and their 44-38 record was their best since 2008. Additionally, the Pistons seem to have found the starting lineup that will take them into the future and allowed them to be incredibly competitive in the first round of the playoffs against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the eventual Eastern Conference Champions, despite being swept 4-0.

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One area that has been constantly brought up as needing room for improvement is the Pistons’ bench. Since their playoff run ended, the team’s need for a better backup point guard and power forward has been discussed to death.

However, one area that hasn’t been mentioned is the concerning amount of blowouts the Pistons suffered during this past season.

The Pistons lost 38 games in the regular season, 20 of which saw them go down by 10 points or more. 10 of those losses were by 15 or more, including an embarrassing 43 point loss to the Washington Wizards on March 14, right in the middle of the Pistons’ push to make the playoffs.

Blowout losses are generally a staple of young teams, so it’s not much of a surprise that the Pistons suffered many of these, but if the team wants to make a serious leap next season this is an aspect they need to address quickly.

These disappointing performances show the distinct lack of leadership the team currently possesses. Steve Blake and Anthony Tolliver were the only NBA veterans regularly in the Pistons rotation this past season, but neither of those players seemed the type of leader to pull the younger players into line and keep them on track when faced with adversity.

If the Pistons had a strong leader off the bench they could rely upon to help manage the game and make sure the score doesn’t get out of control, it’s likely we would have seen many of these blowouts never occur, and we could have potentially seen them steal some of these games after weathering the storm.

Speaking of the bench, having the worst bench unit in the entire league surely didn’t help the team when it came to blowouts.

The Pistons scored just 25.7 points per game off the bench this season. Luckily, the Pistons gave up the sixth least opponent bench points per game with 31.9.

Unfortunately the Pistons awful bench scoring meant they were being outscored by an average of 6.2 points per game.

Too many times this season the starters got the team off to a great start, but it was immediately negated by awful bench play, meaning the starters would have to play catchup the next time they checked in.

Even more alarming was that nine of these blowout losses came against teams that didn’t even make the playoffs.

These are nine games where the Pistons faced teams they are above and really should be beating. There’s no excuse for losing multiple games by double-digits to the New York Knicks.

If the Pistons win just five of these games against non-playoff teams they become a 49 win team, which would have been good enough to finish third in the Eastern Conference, giving them home court advantage and meaning they would have dodged facing the Cavaliers in the first round.

There are silver linings for the Pistons however. They are still incredibly young (Stanley Johnson only just turned 20!) and with age and experience they’ll be able to drastically reduce the amount of games they lose in an uncompetitive manner.

No doubt head coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy is aware of this deficiency in the team and will be working feverishly over the offseason to address this for season 2016-17.

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